Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF)'s first-quarter net income fell 23% year-on-year to €692 million (US$953 million) on revenues that were down 13.5% to €12.23 billion ($16.85 billion), though fluctuations in Latin American currencies ate into the Spanish operator's numbers. Bloomberg reports that, in the wake of the results announcement, Telefónica's shares fell 0.8 percent to €11.95 in early Madrid trading.

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) reported first-quarter revenues (excluding the Enterprise division that it is selling) of €2.96 billion ($4.1 billion), down 3.3% from a year ago. But it cut its losses, reduced costs, and reported notable increases in IP and optical sales. (See IP, Optical Prop Up Alcatel-Lucent's Q1.)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined the GSM Association (GSMA) and others in calling for restrictions on mergers between European telcos to be eased, reports the Financial Times (subscription required). She said that a greater balance needed to be struck between market power and competition to allow European operators to compete at a global level.

BICS , Belgacom SA (Euronext: BELG)'s international wholesale services provider, proved a drag on the group's first-quarter numbers, as revenues fell 6.6% year-on-year to €1.48 billion ($2.03 billion) and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) slipped by the same percentage to €412 million ($567 million). The decline of its prepaid mobile subscriber base was also a factor.

A much-discussed anti-piracy drive has finally got the green light in the UK, according to this BBC report. But content rights holders may not be happy with the plan, which will see BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA), Sky (NYSE, London: SKY), TalkTalk , and Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) sending "educational letters" to their broadband subscribers who are deemed to be illegally downloading content, rather than missives threatening possible punitive action, as had originally been mooted.

Video is going to be the next main source of revenue for operators. Operators have big opportunities and advantages to monetize video services. Globally, Huawei has helped more than 70 operators achieve over 30 million video subscribers. Watch this video for more.

Hyperscale cloud has been developed by the Internet giants to support the creation and delivery of software-based services at blistering speeds, and at the lowest possible cost. The original ETSI NFV vision was to adopt hyperscale cloud architecture and practices. This vision has become somewhat obscured along the way, due to misunderstandings about the hyperscale ...

Designed especially for emergency and dedicated ad hoc local mobile communications coverage, Huawei's eLTE Rapid solution can deliver trunked voice, video and data coverage for multiple users over a 6km range and be set up in just 15 minutes, explains Huawei's Norman Frisch.

Most everything is now connected. And along with 4K and 4G technologies, everyone could be creating and broadcasting video contents. Users are expecting better video experience with any screen, anywhere and anytime. Operators will meet new challenges, but also see some big opportunities.

David Le Goff, director of strategic and product marketing at Qosmos, explains how the company has added application awareness to subscriber information to make service chaining more efficient and reduce costs for networking and infrastructure. In addition, Qosmos technology, which has been delivered as C libraries, is now also available as a virtual machine, ...

LR CEO and Founder Steve Saunders sits down with the head of Qosmos to talk about the changing state of the art in deep packet inspection technology, including its role in SDN and NFV architectures. Also, how the comms market is becoming more like the automotive industry.

Top German soccer club FC Schalke 04 has deployed a new, agile WiFi network from Huawei in its Veltins-Arena stadium and is reaping the benefits in terms of customer satisfaction and business opportunities, explains marketing chief Alexander Jobst.

More people than ever are now watching videos on smartphones. Seventy percent of mobile traffic will be video traffic until 2018. In this video, Huawei's exports give their insights on mobile video in terms of business model, network planning and 4G network construction.

Trunked radio communications have entered the 4G LTE world, and with Huawei's eLTE solution, can now deliver a full range of data and video services as well as push-to-talk voice, explains Huawei's Norman Frisch.

Video is going to be the next main source of revenue for operators. Operators have big opportunities and advantages to monetize video services. Globally, Huawei has helped more than 70 operators achieve over 30 million video subscribers. Watch this video for more.

Hyperscale cloud has been developed by the Internet giants to support the creation and delivery of software-based services at blistering speeds, and at the lowest possible cost. The original ETSI NFV vision was to adopt hyperscale cloud architecture and practices. This vision has become somewhat obscured along the way, due to misunderstandings about the hyperscale ...

Designed especially for emergency and dedicated ad hoc local mobile communications coverage, Huawei's eLTE Rapid solution can deliver trunked voice, video and data coverage for multiple users over a 6km range and be set up in just 15 minutes, explains Huawei's Norman Frisch.

Most everything is now connected. And along with 4K and 4G technologies, everyone could be creating and broadcasting video contents. Users are expecting better video experience with any screen, anywhere and anytime. Operators will meet new challenges, but also see some big opportunities.

David Le Goff, director of strategic and product marketing at Qosmos, explains how the company has added application awareness to subscriber information to make service chaining more efficient and reduce costs for networking and infrastructure. In addition, Qosmos technology, which has been delivered as C libraries, is now also available as a virtual machine, ...

Top German soccer club FC Schalke 04 has deployed a new, agile WiFi network from Huawei in its Veltins-Arena stadium and is reaping the benefits in terms of customer satisfaction and business opportunities, explains marketing chief Alexander Jobst.

More people than ever are now watching videos on smartphones. Seventy percent of mobile traffic will be video traffic until 2018. In this video, Huawei's exports give their insights on mobile video in terms of business model, network planning and 4G network construction.

Trunked radio communications have entered the 4G LTE world, and with Huawei's eLTE solution, can now deliver a full range of data and video services as well as push-to-talk voice, explains Huawei's Norman Frisch.

Chattanooga’s EPB publicly owned utility comms company has become a poster child for how to enable a local economy using next-gen networking technology. Steve Saunders, Founder of Light Reading, sits down with Harold DePriest, president and CEO of EPB, to learn how EPB is bringing big time tech to small town America.